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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24223252">Lucky Strike Means Great Taste</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales'>ThrillingDetectiveTales</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Pacific (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-16</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 17:48:58</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,715</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24223252</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>“Holdin’ up alright, there, Peaches?” Runner asked, voice low in deference to the sleeping Marines slumped across every available surface, and brought a hand up to rest against Bob’s shoulders.</p><p>“Oh, sure.” Bob nodded as well as he could, folded over the water-slick taffrail like a sack doll. “Fit ‘s a - urp.” He pressed his mouth closed and squeezed his eyes shut, wrinkling his nose when the captured breath burned its way out. He stayed there for a long second, gut tight and nostrils stinging, then sighed, “Fiddle,” when he felt confident he was no longer about to lose the evening’s mess over the bow.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Wilbur "Runner" Conley/Robert Leckie</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Heavy Artillery: The Pacific Tenth Anniversary Comment Fest</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Lucky Strike Means Great Taste</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for the last day of Heavy Artillery's The Pacific Tenth Anniversary Comment Fest. Not beta read and basically just useless fluff.</p><p>Is it slash? Is it pre-slash? You be the judge!</p><p>Also, don't smoke, kids. I did it for a few years, myself, and I have to say there's not much to recommend it. Especially if you're trying to settle an upset stomach, I can pretty reliably tell you it will do the exact opposite of that.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It was late when the Runner found him, driven above decks by the rolling swell of the cargo hold. The tilt and pitch had been stirring the sugary slurry of coffee and honest to God hot rations in his stomach to an uncomfortable roil for the better part of a few hours. In the humiliating wake of what had happened with the pilfered peaches back on the island, Bob figured that retreat was the better part of valor and fled to the open air on the deck of the <em>President Wilson</em> in the hopes that the cool sea breeze might quell his rebelling gut.</p><p>It hadn’t worked, so far, but it was pretty out here, at least. The stars were big and bold and bright overhead, and where they reflected back up from the dark waters below, and in Runner’s inky eyes, half-shadowed as they were by the concern knitting his brow. Bob turned so that his cheek was pressed against the cool railing, which also afforded him a better view of Runner’s lanky form picking its careful approach.</p><p>He looked much like he had the last time Bob had seen him—filthy and skinnier than he should be in his thoroughly ruined uniform, but with an ease to his track star’s lope that Bob hadn’t witnessed since they made land on that godforsaken hunk of coral. Runner had washed his face at some point, too, and done his damnedest to slick his greasy hair into some semblance of neatness. He had a cigarette tucked demurely behind one ear, so bright against his weather beaten skin it nearly glowed in the night. Bob’s fingertips tingled with the urge to reach out and reel Runner in, hook him close and tight with an elbow around his shoulders the way they had nearly every evening in Guadalcanal. Maybe sneak a taste of that smirk he had come to know just as well as his own. </p><p>Instead, Bob stayed very still, did his best to summon a smile, and croaked, “Hi.”</p><p>“Holdin’ up alright, there, Peaches?” Runner asked, voice low in deference to the sleeping Marines slumped across every available surface, and brought a hand up to rest against Bob’s shoulders.</p><p>“Oh, sure.” Bob nodded as well as he could, folded over the water-slick taffrail like a sack doll. “Fit ‘s a - urp.” He pressed his mouth closed and squeezed his eyes shut, wrinkling his nose when the captured breath burned its way out. He stayed there for a long second, gut tight and nostrils stinging, then sighed, “Fiddle,” when he felt confident he was no longer about to lose the evening’s mess over the bow.</p><p>Runner didn’t reply, but there came the cool brush of fingertips across Bob’s fevered forehead, up into his filthy, greasy curls where they hung lank over his face.</p><p>Bob hummed a little, because it felt nice, and risked cracking an eye to ask, “Shouldn’t you be sawing logs with the rest of these assholes?”</p><p>Runner was watching him, mouth a thin, rosy slash in the blue dark, jaw tight. For a beat, Bob thought Runner might not pick up the game, subdued to unsettling sobriety the way he often seemed to get when the nights were dark and long and thick with the looming promise of unspeakable unpleasantries. </p><p>He came through in the end, mouth curling a little as he muttered, “Woke me up, clambering down from on high at all hours.” He shrugged. “Figured I might as well see what all the fuss was about.”</p><p>Bob huffed a laugh and licked a thin sheen of ocean spray from his lips. “No fuss,” he promised, reaching up to pat Runner on the side. “Just got a little too friendly with that bowl of sugar at our kaffeeklatsch this afternoon.” His aim was a little off, so he ended up pawing at the vicinity of Runner’s hip, fingers slipping over the bare, sweat-damp skin of his back through the wide hole torn into his shirt.</p><p>Runner tensed and jumped, making a soft noise that Bob couldn’t quite decipher before he cut his eyes to their nearby compatriots, all either lost to pull of exhaustion or else conversing in hushed tones with their heads bowed close together. Bob wondered absently how many of them would rather be kissing. Apparently satisfied that nobody was paying them enough attention to notice what they were doing, Runner stayed where he was and even managed to relax a fraction, so Bob left his hand.</p><p>Runner sucked his teeth and smoothed Bob’s hair back again, risking a soft, slow drag along the shell of Bob’s ear with the pad of his thumb as he went. “Bad luck, for a fellow with a sweet tooth.”</p><p>“Must’ve picked up a curse,” Bob agreed. “Some black magic in that Jap sake we found, or something.”</p><p>“Maybe it’s being visited on you as a punishment for swiping the captain’s moccasins,” Runner offered, still working his fingers through Bob’s sweaty tangle of curls.</p><p>Truth be told, Bob wasn’t usually much for sweets, but after long months battling their way through the jungle on no food and less water, he had fallen just as much victim to overindulgence as the next man suffering the same unwilling lack. He made to stand up but his stomach clenched and heaved again and he dropped back down just as quickly as he’d risen. He let his forehead rest against the railing, planted squarely between his hands, which were wrapped around the same in white-knuckled fists, and heaved a couple of open-mouthed breaths into the wet air.</p><p>He was distantly aware of Runner’s hands on him—drifting up and down his back and along his flank in light, soothing strokes—and of Runner’s voice, low and taut with worry.</p><p>“ - alright, there, Luck, you just let it out if you have to. There you go. <em>There</em> you go. Just breathe, slow and easy. That's it. Just like that.”</p><p>Bob sucked one more breath and then spat onto the deck, bitter and viscous. “What I wouldn’t give for a goddamn toothbrush right about now,” he laughed, aiming for the same easy humor he had carried with him all throughout training camp, though the resulting tone was strung thin and brittle around his words.</p><p>Runner snorted, soft and amused. “Wouldn’t we all,” he agreed sagely. He gave one more sweep across Bob’s shoulders and then turned so he could lean with his back to the taffrail, hip pressed against Bob’s side. “C’mon up here for a second,” he instructed, slightly muffled, and delivered a gentle, backhanded smack to Bob’s shoulder. “Got some’n’t might help.”</p><p>Bob sighed, closing his eyes for a second, and pushed himself shakily up off the railing just in time to catch the flare of a match head out of the corner of his eye.</p><p>Runner had a cigarette perched at the edge of his lip, the long fingers of one hand curled into a shield around the small, flickering flame of a cardboard match. He lit the thing and gave it a couple of quick puffs to get it going, mouth pursed while shadows spilled into the underfed hollows of his cheeks.</p><p>A lick of heat stirred underneath the quivering mess in Bob’s belly so he straightened up and shifted his weight, turning around to mirror Runner’s posture. They were pressed together from hip to shoulder, this way, the bare skin of Bob’s arm brushing the canvas of Runner’s sleeve, which had gone stiff with salt and dirt and other, fouler things.</p><p>Runner took a deep pull off the cigarette and sighed a flat stream of white smoke out through his teeth. “Last of the Lucky Strikes Corrigan gave us. Oughta help settle your stomach,” he said, and offered the cigarette to Bob, pinched loosely between two of his long, elegant fingers.</p><p>Bob accepted it none too carefully, savoring the way that Runner’s clammy skin caught and dragged against his own.</p><p><em>Dear Vera,</em> he thought, as he set the cigarette against his lip. It was still a little wet from Runner’s mouth, and the sensation made Bob shiver. <em>What do you think it means when a man shares his last cigarette with you? Is it base civility? Marine camaraderie? Something sweeter? </em>
</p><p>He took a long, deep drag, the toasted scorch of tobacco prickling down his throat. Sure enough, the pitching and heaving in his gut seemed to mellow under the pressure expanding through his chest. Or maybe it was the heat of Runner alongside him that was to blame. Bob wasn’t about to complain on either front.</p><p>“Thanks,” he said, and handed the cigarette back.</p><p>Runner took it wordlessly, smoking his fill before he offered it again. And so it went, the two of them standing side by side, passing the cigarette back and forth, fingers brushing and mouths growing wetter and redder with every passing second. It was hardly a kiss—a distant cousin of the act, perhaps, or a mimicry many steps removed—but it had the same wanton heat spreading in a slow flood all the way down to Bob’d toes.</p><p>Runner took the last drag. He heaved smoke out through his nose in twin streams and looked at the little glowing cherry for a long second before shaking his head and tossing the butt over his shoulder to drown in the surf. Once he had rid himself of that last, scorching remnant, he curled his hands over the railing behind him and turned to look at Bob out of the corner of his eye.</p><p>“Well?” he asked, and knocked the side of his foot against Bob’s ankle. “Better?”</p><p>“Better,” Bob nodded, leaning in so that their shoulders pressed more firmly against one another. </p><p>Runner leaned into the contact, ducking a smile toward the deck. “Ready to hit the sack?”</p><p>Bob hummed, thoughtful, and leaned back, craning his neck to peer up at the sky, the scatter of constellations shimmering up above. He darted a gaze toward Runner, taking in the long, lean line of him and the way the starlight glinted off his hair, and shook his head.</p><p>“No,” he said, and curled his fingers over top of Runner’s between their bodies where nobody ought to be able to see them. “Not just yet.”</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Thanks for reading!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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